Mark Loeffler

Alumni / Mark Loeffler

profile

Mark Loeffler’s career as a lighting designer began in the 1970s, when he worked for the Austin Ballet Theatre in the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. There he created stage lighting and ran spotlights for headliners like Frank Zappa and Willie Nelson. During his ten years at the theater, Loeffler learned the power of lighting. He marvels, “I could use light to make people cry.”

In the late ’80s, Loeffler headed to the Northeast, only to discover an overabundance of theatrical lighting designers and a shortage of employment. An advertisement for Parsons’ graduate Lighting Design program led him to architectural lighting.

Loeffler credits Parsons with taking him to the center of the fields of architectural lighting and environmental design. “Students learn from the best in the business,” he explains. Today Loeffler heads the New Haven office of Atelier Ten, an international leader in sustainable design, and has consulted on green building projects worldwide. He also lectures at Parsons. “It’s an exciting time in architectural lighting design,” Loeffler says.